Flare (3 page)

I turned back
to the city, unable to look away as the flames began to spread.  The fires, small pinpricks of wavering light from this distance, were too many to count, and I shuddered as I thought of the hundreds of unsuspecting people waking from their beds to find their world reduced to flame, fear and darkness.

“There must be something we can do, we have to help”, I said, but my feet didn’t move.  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the scene below.

“What, exactly?”  Jerry asked savagely. “Maybe if someone had listened to me then everyone could have been evacuated from the cities, or they could have shut the power off in their houses.  All we can do now is stay out of the way and wait for the fires to go out”.

I shook my head.  “No, I can’t just
stand by and not do anything”.

Shoreham was burning now, the town below us glowing brighte
r as more and more fires spread with no one to douse the flames.  The wind picked up, bringing with it a faint scream and the sound of shattering glass.

The noise galvanized me into action, unsticking my feet and pushing me towards the car.

“I can’t just stand here, Jerry”, I said as I began to run, “I’m going to do what I can”.

I didn’t wait for an answer,
but jumped in the car and turned the key in the ignition.

Nothing happened.  I turned it again, but not so much as a flicker came from the engine or any of the other systems.

“It won’t work”, Jerry’s voice came from just outside the car, making me jump.  “It’s less than a year old so it’s full of computers and they’ll all be fried.  Come on, we’ll use mine”.

I got out of the car and pocketed the keys without thinking, then f
ollowed Jerry to his old banger.  He opened the rear door and loaded some of the equipment I’d seen in the field into the back seat. 

“What made you change your mind?”  I asked as he made his way to the front of the car.

“You’re right”, he said over his shoulder as he levered up the bonnet, “I can’t just stand up here and watch”.

Turning to one side so that I could see what he was doing, he held up the battery leads and reconnected them to the battery before closing the bonnet and waving me into the passenger seat.

He turned the key in the ignition and the car sputtered into life.

“One of the joys of being skint”, he said as he turned on the headlights and made his way carefully down the rutted track towards the town, “my car is old enough that the only electronics are the ignition and the radio, and the ignition has no live parts to speak of”.

I didn’t reply, too dazed by what was happening to be able to make small-talk.  My mind’s eye kept replaying the moment the electrical surge had hit the city, seeing first the large explosion, then the dozens of smaller fires that had sprung up in its wake.

Then there was Melody.  Getting to her had seemed risky but doable when I’d thought about driving up, but without a working car it would take me days, maybe even weeks to reach her.

“Jerry”, I said, breaking the silence, “what are you planning to do now?”

He glanced over at me.  “Well, like you said, there are people down there who need help”.

I shook my head.  “No, not right this second now, I mean after”.

He shrugged uncertainly.  “I didn’t really think that far ahead, not properly.  The boot is loaded up with supplies, camping gear and the like.  I was intending to find somewhere out of the way and ride out the worst of it in the hills, I guess”.

I paused for a second, wanting to ask but dreading the answer if he said no.

“My daughter is in Manchester”, I began, then forged on as I saw him shake his head, “and her mother is probably the worst person to be looking after he
r in a crisis. Please Jerry, can you drive me up there? 
Please
?”

My eyes searched his face as he drove, looking for anything that might give away what he was thinking as he sucked his teeth and shook his head.

“I don’t know, it’s a long way Malc.  I’ve got a spare can of diesel in the back but I don’t know if it’ll be enough to get us all the way up there, and the petrol stations won’t be pumping anymore, those that didn’t go up in flames”.

“Then we can syphon some on the way”, I said eagerly. “Think about it Jerry, there’ll be thousands of cars as new as mine that won’
t work, just sitting there useless.  I’m sure the owners won’t mind if we trade something for the fuel”.

Jerry finally looked at me, his expression somewhere between sympathy and anger.

“And what have you got to trade, Malc?  Everything in the car is mine, and money won’t be much good, will it?”

He was right, but my concern for Melody was overriding my usual habit of trying to avoid co
nfrontation.

“I promise you Jerry, I’ll pay you back somehow.  Even if it takes me the rest of my life.  This is my
daughter
we’re talking about, my flesh and blood.  I’ll walk if I have to but the longer it takes me to get to her the more chance there is of…”

I couldn’t finish past the lump in my throat.  Just the thought of anything happening to Melody was enough to reduce me to tears.  I looked out of the passenger window as we pulled out onto the tarmac road at the bottom of the hill and fought to compose myself.

“Ok Malc, ok”, Jerry said quietly, “I’ll take you as far as I can.  I suppose one place is as good as another to camp after I’ve dropped you off”.

I squeezed his shoulder, feeling on the verge of tears again, this time of gratitude as the gut clenching fear faded to a quiet, unsettling murmur.

“Thank you Jerry, I don’t know what I would have done if you’d said no”.

Jerry didn’t answer, instead slowing the car and peering out through the windscreen with wide eyes.

I looked up, only now realising that the light had been gradually increasing as we approached the town.  In my mind, I think I’d dismissed the glow as approaching streetlights, only there weren’t any streetlights left working.

Pulling the car to a halt, Jerry opened his door and got out.  I followed suit, and the moment I stepped out of the vehicle I could hear the roar and crackle of flames, mixed with the shouts, screams and cries of people trapped in their homes or standing outside them watching their lives burn.

I could smell the fires now, the sharp acrid stink of burning wood, plastic and rubber catching in the back of my throat as the flames leapt and writhed, turning the scene into a hellish contrast of light and shadow.

In front of us, a whole row of houses was aflame, while fewer than a dozen people stood watching, most of them in night clothes with bemused expressions on their faces, many gripping their now-useless mobile phones as if they would suddenly start working again.

“What should we do?”  Jerry asked uncertainly, “there’s no water, no way of getting help and the back seats of the car are full of kit so we can’t take anyone with us”.

He turned to me with an anguished expression.

“How do we help them?”

I ducked instinctively as the upper windows of a nearby house exploded outwards, filthy black smoke rolling out in clouds as the fire raged out of control.

“You were right”, I said quietly, seeing the futility but hating myself for what I was about to say, “we can’t help anyone.  Except ourselves, anyway.  Let’s go, there’s nothing we can do”.

We stood there for a few moments longer, perhaps hoping that inspiration would strike and we’d see a way to help, but eventually we climbed back in the car and Jerry started the engine, pulling away without another word.

I’m not sure what was eating me more as we left the ravaged city behind, the fact that we hadn’t even tried to risk ourselves to help anyone, or my secret relief that we didn’t have to.

Chapter 5

The roads were clear of other moving vehicles, although there were enough abandoned ones dotted around to make Jerry grip the wheel with whitened knuckles as they loomed out of the darkness.

He took us along the A27, the main Brighton bypass, then joined the A23 heading up towards London.  As we merged with the larger road, we began to pass people walking back towards the coast on the hard shoulder, a few of them trying to wave us down.

“I’m not stopping”, Jerry said after one man all but leapt in front of the car in an effort to stop us.  I nodded in agreement.  Despite my earlier desire to help, there was nothing we could do but perhaps give out some of Jerry’s stock of food and water, and we wo
uld need that to get to Manchester.

The miles rolled past in silence, neither of us having much to say.  Jerry was concentrating on avoiding the abandoned vehicles, some of which had crashed when they’d lost power, and I was still trying to come to terms with what had happened.

I wondered if my house had survived, or if I would return to find it a charred and smoking ruin, or broken into and looted.

Not that many of my worldly goods would be worth anything now.  I listed them in my head as I realised just how dependent I was on technology that was now largely useless.  Laptop, TV, phone, Ki
ndle, playstation, tablet, ipod.  The list went on, and even when they restored the electricity it would still all be fried, little more than expensive-looking paperweights.

It was hard to believe that one brief flare from the sun, our life-giver, had brought the modern world to its knees, but one look out of the window at the dark, abandoned cars that we were passing more and more frequently was enough to assure me that it very much had.

“How did you know?”  I asked, startling myself as much as Jerry as the question popped out of my subconscious.

“Know what?”  Jerry swerved and cursed as someone leapt out from the hard shoulder, arms waving frantically.

“That the flare would be so bad”, I replied, watching the forlorn figure disappear in the mirror.  “And why were you the only one?”

“Before I, uh,
left
the university, I was one of the country’s leading experts on the sun, and flares in particular”, he said, “and I was working on a series of algorithms that would not only predict when and where a flare would hit, but also how strong it would be”.

He slowed the car a little, making an obvious effort to try and relax his death
-grip on the wheel.

“
I finally figured it out a few days ago”, he continued, “which turned out to be about six months too late.  I tried to contact the government, but the best I could get was some smarmy little shit who was undersecretary to the undersecretary of sweet F.A.  He told me that I didn’t need to worry, and that their experts had told them that the flare was going to be a small one, and would most likely just skim the atmosphere.  Idiots”.

“Why didn’t you go to the media?”  I asked, “show them your calculations and make them listen?”

He glanced over at me and I hurriedly looked away from the accusation in his eyes.

“I tried them first, but the
algorithms have taken me years to perfect, how in hell could I convince some self-obsessed journalist that I was telling the truth?  When I called you yesterday it was my last hope.  I knew that it was going to hit sometime in the next seventy two hours, and I knew it would be big because the CME was going to hit at the same time, and I was really,
really
hoping that you would at least listen to me so that we could get the word out”.

A steely knife of guilt slid between my ribs and stabbed me in the gut.  He was right, had I listened to him in the first place then maybe we could have done some
thing. 

“I’m sorry”.  It was totally inadequate, but at the same time all I could offer.

He sighed and shrugged.  “Don’t worry, I don’t suppose we could have done much anyway.  Can you imagine anyone agreeing to turn their power off at the mains?  No TV, no music, all the food going off in the fridge?  It probably just would have made everyone panic”.

“We could have saved a few, maybe”, I said, the guilt burning a hole in my stomach and making me feel sick.  “Enough to have made a difference”.

“It’s not like the human race has been wiped out”, he said, trying to sound cheerful, “we’ve just dropped back to the stone age overnight.  No drama, eh?”

I looked at him in amazement for a moment, then saw the sly grin and burst out laughing in spite of myself.

“Funny bastard”, I said, the mirth fading as quickly as it had come.  “So how long do you reckon it will take them to get everything up and running again?”

“In truth, I don’t know.  It looked pretty bad when it hit, worse than I expected”.

“Worse than you expected?  How much worse?”

He shrugged again.  “I can’t say for sure, not without deciphering the readings I took just as it hit”.  He nodded back over his shoulder to the reams of printouts on the back seat.

“So what are we talking, days, a week, a month?”  I tried to imagine how many people would die if power wasn’t restored by then, and didn’t like the numbers my mind was offering.